from the justin-trudeau-strikes-again dept

Here's something we don't see enough of here on Techdirt: a long and dispiriting saga with a happy ending. Over the years, we've reported on how Canada's previous prime minister, Stephen Harper, tried to stifle dissenting voices among government scientists and librarians, all of whom were expected to self-censor, even outside their work. But as most people know by now, the new Canadian administration under Justin Trudeau has a rather different style, and fortunately that also applies to how it treats its scientists. As an article in Nature reports, things may be moving too slowly for some, but at least they are moving:

the [Canadian] government is loosening its grip on communications but the shift at some agencies has not been as swift and comprehensive as many had hoped. And with the newfound freedom to speak, the full impact of the former restrictions is finally becoming clear. Canadian scientists and government representatives are opening up about what it was like to work under the former policy and the kind of consequences it had. Some of the officials who imposed the rules are talking about how the restrictions affected the morale and careers of researchers.

As well as filling in the background to this welcome move, Nature explores some of the stories that are starting to emerge, like this one:

During the 1970s, [Ian Stirling, a prominent biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada] had gone to meetings in Canada that were also attended by Soviet scientists. The visiting researchers would arrive, he says, "with a KGB guy, who would stand there with no smiles, a scowl on his face and arms crossed". Stirling still finds it unbelievable that the Canadian government used similar tactics at conferences. In 2012, for example, the Canadian news outlet CBC reported that media minders had shadowed scientists from Environment Canada at a meeting of the International Polar Year in Montreal.

from the la-la-la-la-la-not-listening dept

Three years ago, Techdirt wrote about the Canadian government muzzling scientists and librarians, in a clear effort to prevent them from pointing out that some of Canada's policies were scientifically stupid. That was a blatant attempt to censor those who had not just inconvenient opinions but also awkward facts that would have made life difficult for the Canadian government. The UK wants to do something similar, by forbidding scientists and academics from using their expertise to push for changes in policy -- even in private. As The Guardian reported:

The proposal -- announced by the Cabinet Office earlier this month -- would block researchers who receive government grants from using their results to lobby for changes to laws or regulations.

For example, an academic whose government-funded research showed that new regulations were proving particularly harmful to the homeless would not be able to call for policy change.

Similarly, ecologists who found out that new planning laws were harming wildlife would not be able to raise the issue in public, while climate scientists whose findings undermined government energy policy could have work suppressed.

A new clause to be inserted into all new and renewed grant agreements will make sure that taxpayer funds are spent on improving people’s lives and good causes, rather than lobbying for new regulation or using taxpayers’ money to lobby for more government funding.

That might sound reasonable, especially the last part about not being able to lobby for more funding. It is aimed mainly at organizations that receive government grants, but many academics believe that it is so loosely worded that it will also apply to them, and will prevent them from pushing for new regulations in any circumstances. Even if that is not the UK government's intention, the mere existence of the policy is bound to have a chilling effect on the academics, since few will want to run the risk of having their grants taken away by inadvertently breaking the new rules.

The "anti-lobbying" clause to be inserted into new grant agreements will create a barrier to evidence-based policymaking and will have unintended effects on the work of [Parliament's advisory] select committees.

Specifically, the politicians on the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee wrote:

We are concerned that the Cabinet Office's announcement has created ambiguity, and that researchers will become reluctant to present to us the policy recommendations that arise from their work. Academics may also become unwilling to take on advisory positions in Government or Parliament, and may even feel uncomfortable speaking at conferences where policymakers are present, for fear of falling foul of this clause.

I don't just want this ban overturned: I want to see more academics talking to policymakers, and I want the public to know what we do, so that they can decide if it's good or bad.

Indeed, he suggests that rather than forbidding academics from lobbying for new regulations, they should be encouraged and even trained to do so:

If you're an academic who lobbies, then don't be shy, and don't be scared: you should share your experiences, and your techniques. If you want to waste even more time on activities with no credit and no hope of funding, then perhaps we could set up a course, or a forum, to pool knowledge on better ways to interact with [the UK government]. And lastly, if you’re a politician, and you really want to ban this activity, then shame on you. You're a failure, an obstacle to good progress, and an outlier. But there's one final piece of happier news. You won't last long.

from the non-appliance-of-science dept

Techdirt has been following for a while Canada's moves to stop scientists from speaking out about areas where the facts of the situation don't sit well with the Canadian government's dogma-based policies. Sadly, it looks like the UK is taking the same route. It concerns a new code for the country's civil servants, which will also apply to thousands of publicly-funded scientists. As the Guardian reports:

Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.

The fear -- quite naturally -- is that ministers could take days before replying to requests, by which time news outlets will probably have lost interest. As a result of this change, science organizations have sent a letter to the UK government, expressing their "deep concern" about the code. A well-known British neurobiologist, Sir Colin Blakemore, told the Guardian:

"The real losers here are the public and the government. The public lose access to what they consider to be an important source of scientific evidence, and the government loses the trust of the public," Blakemore said.

Not only that, by following Canada's example, the British government also makes it more likely that other countries will do the same, which will weaken science's ability to participate in policy discussions around the world -- just when we need to hear its voice most.

from the screw-you,-researchers dept

We've written plenty about open access and how the big scientific journals profit off of publicly funded research by putting it behind a paywall, thereby greatly limiting the ability of knowledge (often paid for with our tax dollars) to be used to further discovery, research and innovation. The impact on society is tremendous, and unfortunate.

In the science realm, there are two "big" journal publishers: Nature and Science. If you're an academic releasing a scientific paper, those tend to be the two journals you most want your papers to appear in. So, it seemed like good news when Nature claimed it was moving away from a paywall and going to allow open access to the research papers it publishes. But the details suggest that whoever came up with this plan did it for the stupidest of reasons. Nature's own report on this change of plans kicks off by highlighting how ridiculously limited and encumbered with DRM this new offering will be:

All research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed or downloaded, the journal’s publisher Macmillan announced on 2 December.

Well, even that's an exaggeration. The full press release notes that it's not that everything will be "free to read" but rather that those who do subscribe will be able to freely "share" the works (in this annoying, limited, proprietary DRM manner). Also "100 media outlets and blogs" will be given access as well, so that they can also share the works in this annoying, limited proprietary way:

Subscribers to 49 journals on nature.com will be able to share a unique URL to a full text, read-only version of published scientific research with colleagues or collaborators in the most convenient way for them, e.g. via email and social media. Included are the world's most cited scientific publication, Nature; the Nature family of journals and fifteen other quality science journals. This new initiative will be available to scientists and students at more than 6,000 universities and organizations worldwide, and serve the more 10 million monthly unique visitors to nature.com. This sharing is intended for personal, non-commercial use. To further aid collaboration, forthcoming annotation functionality will enable subscribers to share comments and highlighted text with their colleagues.

100 media outlets and blogs across the globe that report on the findings of articles published on nature.com will be able to provide their own readers with a link to a full text, read-only view of the original scientific paper. Thousands of high-quality scientific papers will be available. Nature has published some of the leading scientific stories of our time, such as the Human Genome; the structure of DNA; Dolly the Sheep; the invention of the laser; the identification of the AIDS virus and the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer.

Is this more open than the full paywall? Sure. But, it's such a hamfisted way of "opening up" that it makes things even more annoying. If you can't download, copy or print the text -- and you have to install annoying proprietary software -- it makes it a hell of a lot harder for researchers to actually make use of the text to, you know, contribute to their own research. Of course, the announcement also notes that Nature's owner, Macmillan, just happens to have a "majority investment" in ReadCube, the proprietary DRM platform that the company is using.

In other words, this has little to do with true open access. Instead, it's a rather cynical attempt to pretend to be open access, while trying to pump up its own investment in some crappy DRM system. So, sure, kudos for taking a layer off the top of the paywall, but this is hardly a revolutionary step. It still seems very much designed to make it as annoying and inconvenient as possible to actually share knowledge. I mean, this is the very same Nature that, just months ago, was trying to pressure researchers from universities that had open access policies to get those universities to waive those policies when seeking to get published in Nature...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Kids of all ages are entertained by toys that are just smaller versions of everyday items -- eg. toy cars, model trains, tiny dollhouses, etc. Most kids outgrow this fascination with small things when they get bigger, but some folks don't. Plenty of adults work on building small, intricate designs... that can be artwork or technology. Here are just a few examples of people using their imaginations to create almost incredibly tiny worlds that everyone should be able to appreciate.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Year after year, news reports state that the US has horrible test scores in math compared to other countries. This leads commenters to speculate on the dismal future of the US economy and to complain about the weaknesses of the entire US educational system. However, international tests have never correlated that well with the relative economic performance of a country, so it's hard to see how bad test scores would accurately predict future economic rankings. There are plenty of things to try to fix in the US education system, but perhaps we should be planning a longer term strategy (instead of trying to turn the ship every election year) and focus on the evidence of what produces good educational results (if we can even agree on what results we want).

from the policy-based-evidence dept

One of the most fundamentally insane things about government and politics is the fact that evidence-based policy is frequently not the norm. It should be common sense that you don't create new laws and regulations without actual evidence that they will work, or even clear evidence on the scope of the problem they aim to solve. But as we know, things don't really work that way—it's a lot easier for politicians and legislators to make their push based on emotion and public perception.

As with any governmental problem, real change has to start with the citizens. We need to demand evidence, and try not to let ourselves or our peers rely on rhetoric when we discuss and debate important issues and participate in the political process. But governments are not blameless: too often, politicians treat evidence as an obstacle to their political goals, when it should be the motivator of them. Here in Canada, this issue has been slowly gaining attention over the past year with growing complaints that the current government requires scientists it employs to vet their results through a media office before releasing them, to ensure that they are politically on-message. The Globe & Mail recently published a firmly-worded editorial calling on the government to end this practice, and citing the many people who want the same:

Ottawa should respond to the growing controversy – outlined in the prestigious journal Nature – by freeing its scientists. The magazine is calling on the government to show that it will live up to its promise to embrace public access to publicly funded scientific expertise. The issue is serious enough that it was the subject of a panel at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held last month in Vancouver.

The Canadian Science Writers Association and the World Federation of Science Journalists have also sent an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, citing examples of researchers being prevented from sharing details about their published work on climate change, natural resources, health, and fisheries and oceans. In the case of studies involving collaborators from other countries, Canada often gets “scooped” by foreign media who are not subject to the same level of bureaucratic interference. That hardly qualifies as celebrating success in science.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has drawn criticism before for exerting tight control over the media and all communications coming from his government, but this situation goes a step further. To censor scientists in this way neuters them and turns them into glorified copywriters, because the objective reporting of all evidence is the crux of the scientific pursuit. If this is how the government treats its scientists, then the government is not employing scientists at all.

This is a betrayal of Canadian citizens. A portion of our tax dollars goes to funding public scientific research, because it is supposed to benefit us by informing smart, effective policy, and that money is being squandered. We must call on the government to put scientists in their proper role: as shapers of the political agenda, not slaves to it. Until that happens, Canada bears the shame of being a country without public science.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People are usually pretty quick to admit that artificial intelligence programs are better than most humans at solving a lot of math problems. Human scientists have generally been needed to interpret data and make conclusions, but AI software could be catching up with scientists by coming up with their own hypotheses and conclusions. Here are just a few examples of programs that might be writing up their own PhD dissertations someday.

from the that's-not-how-science-works dept

Glyn Moody points us to the news that BP has apparently been hiring up a bunch of local scientists associated with various Gulf Coast universities to study the impact of the oil spill. While some might suggest at least BP should be paying for some of the analysis of the damage it has done, the details suggest that this is more about silencing the scientists. That's because part of the contract it's making them sign is an agreement that they won't publish or share their data for at least three years. That's generally not how scientists work. They look to share data with others and to publish frequently. When one university told BP it couldn't accept such confidentiality requirements, BP went elsewhere. In other words, it's pretty clear that this has nothing to do with actually understanding and letting the world know what has happened. It's about keeping it quiet for as long as possible.

from the it's-called-reinforcement? dept

A recent report looked at how scientists respond when caught plagiarizing a research paper. The article and the responses are a bit amusing -- but what struck me was the claim that the vast majority of "plagiarism" was actually "self-plagiarism." In other words, the researcher was effectively reusing some bit of material he or she had published for something else. I'm sure some academics will be quick to explain why this is a horrible breach of academic protocol, but I'm having a very difficult time understanding how this makes any sense, whatsoever. Reusing concepts, ideas, data or anything else would seem to be an incredibly useful tool for the purposes of reinforcement, or even to build on those earlier works. Limiting that for some artificial standard just doesn't seem to make much sense. There obviously may be cases where the first research journal to publish something gets the copyright on the content (an all-too-frequent occurrence, especially for publicly-funded research), but even then it's not "plagiarism" so much as copyright infringement, potentially -- and it seems ridiculous to not allow such reuse to go forward.